This invention concerns a method of producing a guarding cover for racks and the like to pad them effectively for avoiding injury to people and objects when bumped thereagainst.
Prior to the present invention there have been produced and used such guarding covers for the bottom sides of baggage racks in passenger railroad cars. A typical such cover may consist of a rectangular and substantially flat, bendable sheet of suitable metal, e.g., aluminum, constituting a backing sheet, which may be about 5 feet long and about 2 feet wide defined into three successive panels by a pair of longitudinal bend lines. One of these panels or the first thereof may be about 15 inches wide, the next or intermediate one about 6 inches wide, and the third about 3 inches wide. The angles between the upper and inside faces of the first and intermediate panels, and the latter and the third panel may be about 135.degree.. A covering or blanket layer was prepared by adhesively laminating a vinyl sheet to a relatively thick slice of foamed or sponge rubber by hand and the resulting body ply was then handbonded to the outer side faces of the three-panel metal backing sheet. The plural-ply sponge rubber and vinyl sheet blanket layer was appreciably longer than the five feet longitudinal length of the backing sheet, e.g., about a foot, for appreciable lapping back or hemming of the blanket layer about both of the end edges of the backing sheet and adhesively anchoring by hand these lapped back hems thereto. Due to angular relationships of these successive metal panels such hems unavoidably were wrinkled in an unsightly manner and the adhesive anchorages thereof were none too secure since they required the use of heat sensitive adhesives. Such successive hand operations require a high degree of skill and are excessively time consuming, so that such production is quite a costly procedure.
It is a general object of the present invention to provide better guarding covers at much cheaper cost and which are more sightly than such prior covers.
In accordance with the present invention, more desirable and highly serviceable guarding covers, particularly to alleviate hazards of bumping injuries, are producible by a simpler procedure. The foamed blanket layer may be a layer of vinyl foam and it may have an integral face skin that is tough and decoratively textured. The relatively stiff metal base sheet that is bendable to different contours to define panel areas initially is substantially flat. For the same services as the prior guarding covers this base sheet and the blanket layer are of about the same length and about that of the prior base sheet, so that the end edges of the blanket layer ultimately may be hemmed with the end edges of the base sheet. This blanket layer has a bottom face, opposite its outer skin face when the latter is present, that is adhesively laminated to the opposed outer face of the substantially flat base sheet to form a relatively flat sandwich. This sandwich may be relatively large in width and length to have a plurality of the proper size units cut therefrom for finishing each separately as a cover unit. It is a relatively simple procedure to hem one or more edges of such composite cover unit sandwich in a press break with a crushing die to fold the metal backing sheet and the blanket layer carried by it through 180.degree.. The shaping of each of these composite sandwiches and the forming of the one or more composite hems thereof can be done with the use of much less labor, and that required need not be as skilled as that required for the production of each of the prior cover units. Also, the present process permits use of more durable materials and adhesives in the production of such cover units which have better appearance and longer life.